Kindle Scout is expanding worldwide to offer authors the chance of a $1,500 advance, 50% ebook royalties and Amazon-backed marketing on a five-year contract.
The ‘reader-powered’ publishing scheme was previously open only to US authors but has now been extended to writers in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and India.
Author submissions should be never-before-published, novel-length English-language manuscripts which will be considered for publication in 45 days or less under Amazon’s digital publishing banner Kindle Press.
Kindle Scout is open to works in the following genres:
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Romance
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Mystery & Thriller
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Science Fiction & Fantasy
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Teen & Young Adult
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General Literature & Fiction
It’s easy to enter your work for Kindle Scout as you just need to upload:
- A complete, never-before-published manuscript of about 50,000 words or more in Word format
- A title and cover image
- A book one-liner of 45 characters or less
- A longer book description of 500 characters or less
- A photo of you and bio of 500 characters or less
- An author Q&A (pick up to three of the questions provided by Kindle Scout — see below — and answer each in 300 characters or less per question)
- Social links (up to four links to let your readers know where they can find out more about you or your works)
- A thank you note (a note of appreciation to readers who nominated your book, which will be sent on your behalf at the end of your Kindle Scout campaign)
The questions provided by Kindle Scout for the author Q&A are:
- What is the inspiration for the story?
- Is there a message in your book that you want readers to grasp?
- Where can readers find out more about you?
- What books have influenced your life the most?
- What books are you reading now?
- What was the hardest part of writing this book?
- What did you learn while writing this book?
- Which writers inspire you?
- What draws you to this genre?
- Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead character from this book?
- When did you decide to become a writer?
- Why do you write?
- Where did the idea for this book come from?
- If this book is part of a series, tell us about your series.
- Tell us about the cover and the inspiration for it.
A cover image should be taller than it is wide, with suggested dimensions of 4500 pixels height and 2820 pixels width or a 1.5 height/width ratio). It must be in PNG or Jpeg format and no bigger than 5Mb.
Books are selected for a 30-day Kindle Scout campaign and readers then nominate their choices for publication. Amazon says, ‘The more nominations your book receives the more likely it will get the attention of our Kindle Scout team and be selected for publication.’
Kindle Scout is open all year round and there’s no cut-off date for submissions.
Kindle Scout general manager Dina Halal says “Expanding our platform to authors and readers outside the US has been one of the most frequent requests we’ve received since we launched. We’re eagerly awaiting the great new stories that will come from opening to even more talented writers and Scouts from around the world”
Readers around the world can now also preview excerpts, nominate the stories they want to see published and receive a free early copy of every book they nominate that is released by Kindle Press.
The Kindle Scout scheme publishes ebooks only and authors are free to publish print editions themselves or through other publishers. Kindle Press ebooks will be enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited subscription service.
The Kindle Scout track record so far includes:
- 75 titles selected for publication by Kindle Press.
- Kindle Press books have an average Amazon customer review of 4.48 stars across 2,709 reviews.
- Eddie and Sunny by Stacey Cochran, one of the first books released by Kindle Press, became a Kindle Top 100 Best Seller.
- After being selected by Kindle Scout, Sariah Wilson, author of Royal Date, and Jennifer Skutelsky, author of Grave of Hummingbirds, received publishing deals with Amazon Publishing imprints.
You can see all selected Kindle Press books at Kindle Scout and view the Kindle Scout Eligibility & Content Guidelines for more details.
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